Hackers who hacked into accounts of users of a ticket website to stage a $1 million fraud were arrested in a transatlantic crackdown by joint forces of the UK and Canadian police. Over 1,600 StubHub users suffered in the sophisticated scheme where their personal data was stolen and credit cards were used fraudulently to buy tickets, which were then sold on.

The tickets included gigs by Elton John, Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z, sports events like New York Yankees baseball games and the US Open, as well as Broadway shows like The Book of Mormon. Then money was filtered away via a global network of accomplices in the United States, United Kingdom, Russia and Canada.

The British police arrested three people – the men aged 27, 39 and 46. All of them were held on suspicion of money laundering, after dawn raids in British cities. In the meantime, Canadian police arrested another hacker in Toronto, and US authorities confirmed they had 6 people charged in the United States. The police claimed that over million dollars could have been lost if the money launderers had not been stopped.

The criminals hacked into a well protected system, getting into people’s accounts, buying and selling tickets, realizing that money. Then they were trying to launder that money via London. StubHub, an eBay company, was regarded as a safe, convenient place for fans to collect tickets to the shows they want to see, as well as to sell them if they changed their mind.

It is known that the hackers didn’t break through the site’s security, but rather got account-holders’ login and password information from data breaches at other services. StubHub detected the illegal transactions in 2013, contacted authorities and refunded the affected customers.

The US analysts investigated the receipts and transaction records of over 1,600 hacked accounts and managed to trace the exchanges to IP-addresses, PayPal accounts, bank accounts, and other financial accounts used and controlled by the cybercrime gang.

Now the international efforts allowed to arrest these people – the UK police said they are building a “very strong relationship” with the New York police. The British authorities claimed that it is important to protect the integrity of a local financial market and to work with NY to also protect their market – it is understandable that the criminals targeting London would also want to target New York for the same reasons.